Foreign tourists have been banned from visiting a prominent Hindu temple in India's Goa state after outrage at their inappropriate clothing and behavior, religious leaders said.

Officials at the Mahalasa Narayani temple in Mardol, 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the state capital Panaji, said they had taken the decision because of complaints from worshippers about scantily-clad women sightseers.

Campaigners in India have demanded that children under 14 be banned from swallowing live fish in a traditional treatment for asthma administered at a festival every year in June.

Hundreds of thousands of sufferers gather annually in Hyderabad in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh to gulp down small live fish and a special herb paste.

India's pilgrimage centers are fast becoming hot-spots for hotel chains, as both domestic and international groups look to plug a gap in the market for quality accommodation.

Devotees flocking to so-called "temple towns" such as Shirdi in western Maharashtra state, the Sikh holy city of Amritsar in Punjab and far-flung Haridwar have for years had to make do with basic facilities.

Ferrari launched its first dealership in India on Thursday, seven years after it entered China but with the same aim of satisfying demand for flashy cars from the growing class of Asia's super-rich.

The full range of sports cars from the Italian manufacturer will be on sale, with the cheapest model, the California, priced at 22 million rupees (485,000 US dollars) after punitive import tariffs of more than 100 percent are applied.

Under a cloak of secrecy, the first film adaptation of controversial author Salman Rushdie's celebrated novel "Midnight's Children" has finished shooting in Sri Lanka.

Canadian director Deepa Mehta chose the South Asian island as a location instead of India or Pakistan, where the book is set, to avoid problems with religious fundamentalists.

Breast cancer patients who practice yoga experience lower stress and improved quality of life compared to counterparts who do stretching exercises, a U.S. study indicated.

Researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center studied 163 women with an average age of 52 who were undergoing radiation therapy for breast cancer, ranging from early onset to stage three.

Times have changed in Bollywood from the days when all that was required to promote a film was a giant, hand-painted poster, a television or cinema trailer and the pulling power of a star actor.

Now, the popular Hindi-language film industry is harnessing the latest technology, hoping that the explosive increase in mobile phones and rapid take-up of the Internet will draw in much-needed audiences.

Hindu holy man Sathya Sai Baba, considered a living god by millions of followers worldwide, died Sunday in a hospital near his southern Indian ashram, a doctor said. He was 86.

Sai Baba had spent more than three weeks on breathing support and dialysis while struggling with multiple-organ failure at the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, near his ashram in Puttaparti village in southern Andhra Pradesh state. He died Sunday morning, hospital director Dr. A.N. Safaya said.

The price of gold topped $1,500 for the first time on Wednesday as a weaker dollar plus fears over high inflation and debt attracted investors into the traditional safe-haven precious metal.

Gold reached $1,505.65 an ounce at 0945 GMT on the London Bullion Market. It later traded at $1,503.60.

At least 18 people died and five others were badly burnt on Tuesday when a helicopter crashed in northeast India close to the border with China, a local police chief told Agence France Presse.

"The numbers of those killed are 18 and five people badly burnt have been taken to hospital in Tawang," said S.B. Singh, police inspector general of Arunachal Pradesh state, amending the earlier death toll of 20.